Rai Gherba
'''Rai is the main protagonist of the series Tai Chi Chasers as well as a member of the Tigeroid race and the new co-leader of the Chasers', alongside Sena. Since the day the evil Dragonoid Luka attacked his home, his once normal life has changed drastically as he must now help his fellow Tigeroids find the Tai Chi cards before the Dragonoids. He is voiced by Bella Hudson in the English Dub. His Tai-Chi skills include the Hwa (Fire) and Geom (Sword) Tai Chi attacks. He also learned how to make his own Explosion by slashing two different Tai Chi cards and Flame by slashing his Fire card twice. Appearance Rai is a young teenage boy with red hair and dark red eyes. His outfit consists of a red t-shirt with an orange section and white lines and collar with red and orange shorts and red shoes. When he transforms into a Tigeroid, his hair takes a more of a wild flare. His eyes become more narrow and he grows tiger stripes on his arms and under his eyes as well as fangs in his mouth. His anger also seems to be more fluent in his actions as he attacked Luka automatically after his first transformation. Personality Rai is a kind and thoughtful young man with a strong love for his mother, who seems to have been the only member of his family with him currently. Before leaving home for the Thump Tower contest, he asks what he should get for her birthday, which was on the same day as the contest. Even though she tells him that he is the best gift she could ever want, he still believes she deserves a great gift. He seems to have a long running rivalry with Kyo, another kid from his school. They seem to have a fierce rivalry with one another as Rai continues to boast his victories against him when they meet for a contest. Rai's personality takes a big change after his first encounter with Luka, resulting with his home being destroyed and his mother gone, Rai now is a bit of a stubborn headed boy, not wanting to believe his part in the fight between the Tigeroids and Dragonoids. Though he is with the Tai Chi Chasers, it took him a while to truly accept the others as his friends (which he does after a talk with a mysterious masked person). He has a competitive rivarly with Finn, and possibly shares feelings with Sena. He seems close with Tori and Donha the most. Biography Beginnings as a Chaser One morning, as Rai was awoken by his mom, he quickly heads out to take part in the Thump Tower contest, where he planned to win the $10,000 prize so he could get his mom the best birthday gift ever (even though she tells him earlier that she was happy enough to have a son like him). Once at the sight of the contest, he meets up with his rival Kyo, who share a quick rivalry banter about how Rai has won 37 times in a row and how Kyo brags that this time will be the day Rai loses. They both enter the contest, stacking their tower of cards with precision, both being outmatched by the sudden appearance of Tori, who joined at the last minute. Though Tori is on the verge of winning, he and Donha rush off to help their friends against the Dragonoids. And then after Kyo sneezes and knocks his tower over, Rai is declared the winner and wins the prize. But he cannot help but feel partially defeated that he could not outstack Tori. Afterwards, he heads back to town to pick out a gift, eventually deciding on a beautiful jewelry box in a store window. In the process, he meets a strange old man that comments on how the jewelry box would be a great gift for a special someone (possibly hinting at his mother). But even after Rai has the box gift wrapped and returns home, he finds his home broken into and ransacked, fortunately not when his mother was there. Rai meets Luka, a deadly Dragonoid, who proceeds to attack Rai, calling him a Tigeroid. As he's thrown off balance by the wave of attacks, his mother arrives and pushes Rai out before closing the door, facing Luka herself. But Rai begs her to let him back in, not about to lose her. Shortly after, a giant explosion envelopes the house, causing his mom to disappear but not Luka. Angered by the fact that his home was destroyed and his mother was gone, Rai suddenly transforms into a Tigeroid, bearing spiky hair and tiger stripes. And after finding the Tai Chi symbol Hwa in the chest, he uses his new skills and powers to dodge Luka's attacks before attacking back with great ferocity. Its only after the other Tai Chi Chasers arrive that Luka is defeated and the others welcome him to the team. However, Rai does not want any part with them at first, desperately wanting his mother back. They manage to calm him by Tori using the Tai Chi symbol Myoen to put him to sleep. When Rai awakes, he finds himself aboard the Tigeroid ship that brought the others to Earth. The team then introduce themselves again (already making Sena annoyed by his attitude) before bringing him to Komorka, the Chaser's elder leader, who explains the history of their battle. But despite her explanation, Rai calls it nothing but lies and runs off the ship, going back for the ruins of his home. However, upon arrival, he runs right into Luka again, having a hunch he would return. Rai tries to fight Luka again without his Tai Chi skills, but is thrown to the ground by Luka. But before their fight continues, two other Dragonoids arrive and call Luka back to the ship. But one stays behind to fight the angered Rai. Rai is struggling against his enemy, using the Tai Chi symbol of whip to attack him. But Sena and the others find and rescue Rai, stepping in for him until he is given his Activator back by Donha. With it, he gets another Tai Chi card, the Geom symbol. With both skills, Rai defeats the Dragonoid before deciding to accept his reality and joins the others. But he does not consider himself apart of their team yet, only wanting revenge on Luka for what he did to his home. Now living on the Tigeroid air ship with the other Chasers, they do their best to try and get Rai involved with daily chores and such, but he remains mostly stuck up and stubborn, not wanting to do any. On his first days with the Chasers, he's mostly gone on solo missions with at least one other Tai Chi Chaser (except for Finn). The more he is involved with the battle between the two races, he is shown to have strong Tai Chi skills, being able to respond with yet to be obtained Tai Chi symbols, using them in his favor to help the others. He's done this twice (one time for Donha and the other for Sena). One day, Garnia attacks the landed Tigeroid air ship with a giant fleet of Dragonoid robot soldiers as Sena and Finn leave to find a nearby Tai Chi symbol. Tori, Donha and Rai are left behind to watch the ship as Garnia makes his move. He uses a Tai Chi symbol to completely make their activators useless, stripping them of their Tai Chi attacks while he storms the ship to take their symbols. But Rai follows after Garnia and confronts him just before he enters the chamber. They engage in a hand to hand battle which Rai is slowly losing, but even without his Activator (possibly triggered by his strong memories of his mother), Rai is able to use his Hwa card with his mysterious power, firing it directly close at Garnia's face. He is successful in driving away Garnia and protecting the symbols. Meeting the Mysterious Warrior The next Tai Chi symbol hunt led Rai to a sunken ship in the bottom of a sea, a bad place to be if you were a Tigeroid fighting a Dragonoid. Rai once again ignores orders to retreat if a Dragonoid was sensed aboard the wreck and found himself against Luka once more. The vicious Luka proves more powerful as Rai's cards are weaker in strength underwater against him. But before Luka can finish him, a mysterious masked figure saves him and takes over the fight, giving him the symbol card he was looking for. His savior also mentions that Rai can't always do everything himself and can only get stronger by sharing his strength with his friends. Rai takes these words to heart when he helps his friends against Jahara shortly after leaving the wreck. It was then that Rai now truly acknowledges the other Chasers as his friends. Even despite treating the others as friends, Rai had problems with Finn. He didn't think Finn had any sense of feelings since he always remained quiet and distant. However, he soon realized that under Finn's cold exterior was someone who did care for the others as he let Rai sneak off to help free Tori while he was captured by Ave, who he faced alone to purposely distract him. After Ave's latest defeat, Rai saw Finn smile, something for the first time he's seen since joining. After an encounter with Sena's younger sister, Hannah, the Tigeroid ship soon passes Rai's hometown once again. He takes a break from cleaning the deck to look out at the city, having many memories of his home. But Sena arrives and accidentally believes that Rai is goofing off instead of working and starts a one sided arguement with Rai, who is trying to explain what he was doing. But it goes wrong when Sena hurtfully tells Rai that he should forget about what Luka did to his mother (not on purpose), making Rai so angry that he quits the team right in Sena's face, leaving her shocked and worried as Rai hands over his cards and activator before taking off. Now having left the team, Rai returns to his hometown and, while he faces and beats Kyo again through a series of challenges, he is saddened to see that someone had rebuilt a new house where the remains of his old one was and there is no trace of it left. Shortly after, he finds Ave and a horde of Dragonoid robots chopping trees down to use to attack the airship. Almost on instinct as a Chaser, Rai wants to intervene but forgets he no longer has his activator or cards. But soon after, he dismisses it as "his problem" and forgets about it. However, he soon finds himself at the scene of the attack when the logs are thrashing the Tigeroid airship, trapped by the Dragonoids. He quickly hurries to help out, remembering that the Chasers are his family now and using one of the boards he took from the ship, and soon finds himself aboard the Dragonoid airship where he is face to face with Garnia again. But soon after, the strange masked figure returns and tells Rai that what he did by leaving the Chasers was foolish. She then gives him two new Tai Chi cards that he is able to use with his power, one that summons an army at his command and one that grants him a pair of wings. Using these new cards, while promising never to use them again after today, he soon gives the Chasers enough time and power to launch a counterattack and chases the Dragonoids away, returning to the Chasers and promising them to never leave again. During Sena's hour of depression, the evil Dragonoid general decided to attack the Tigeroid airship himself with his forbidden Tai Chi symbol, ghost. But while Sena was gloomed out and the team in need of a leader, Rai tried to force Sena to snap out of it and take the lead again. Luckily, it worked and the Chasers defeated General Vicious together. Afterwards, Rai was appointed by Sena as the new leader of the Chasers (feeling that Rai was better suited for the position than she was). But after a short little quip between the two, they settled that they would lead the Chasers together, to which they seem to accept and laugh happily about. The New Co-Leader Rai appears more into their missions after becoming co-leader alongside Sena, shown to be just as fired up as she was after Komorka left the ship to attend to other matters. In that moment, Rai and Sena seemed to be on equal mind with one another. When Sena's sisters interfere with the Chasers work of acquiring recently discovered Tai Chi cards, Rai's short temper led him and the Chasers to challenge them to getting the cards first. While they seem to be clueless and fumble into booby trap after another on the grounds of ancient ruins, they eventually aide them in driving away Ave and a giant horde of Dragonoid robots, using their new acquired Tai Chi road card to give Rai a pathway towards Ave's final defeat (he was later sent back by General Miskah). It appears that the new Dragonoid general has taken eye to Rai. During a mission to recover the Dream Tai Chi card, Rai becomes one of the only awake Chasers capable of recovering the card and to stop its convergance (aided by Finn and Duran). Though Rai is close to getting the card, it converges and transforms everyones dreams to nightmares before sending a monstrous creature made from nightmares to attack them. In the process, the card protecting him from falling asleep is knocked away and before he can recover it, Rai succumbs to the card's power and falls asleep. He awakens in a dream of being back home with his mother (questioning if everything he went through with the Chasers and the Dragonoids was the actual dream). But as he is happy again to be with his mom, the strange masked Tigeroid appears in his dream and convinces him to wake up, reminding him that his friends need him. Rai is able to wake up on his own will and helps Finn in defeating the nightmare monster and freeing everyone under its influence. After obtaining the card and leaving with the others, Rai begins to piece together his mother's words with those of the mysterious Tigeroid, wondering if she was, in fact, his mother. His next mission was with Tori and Sena seeking out a Tai Chi character before being sidetracked by visiting Tori's orphanage. Upon arrival, Rai learned that Tori lied to the kids about being a famous movie star and Sena was his co-star, sticking Rai as his arrogant manager (to which he quickly blew his top). He tried to convince Tori to tell the kids the truth, saying he couldn't keep the lie forever. But after seeing Tori trying his hardest to live up to his lie, Rai decided to help, alongside Sena, and they built a stage for Tori to perform (taking an entire night to build). He was caught up by the convergance of the Tai Chi Sad card and started to cry along with everyone but Tori. When the convergance stopped, he and Sena had to fight off Garnia. But like Sena, Rai was inflicted by Garnia's Slow card, making his movements sluggish. But Tori helped by countering with his Fast card to speed them up again (a comical quirp followed by Rai being hit by Slow and Fast repeatedly, making him angry that he felt like a yo-yo going between fast and slow so quickly). They defeated Garnia before he was chased off. In their next mission, Rai and the other Chasers came upon a town under the influence of the Forget Tai Chi symbol, giving everyone who suffered under its power amnesia. Rai foolishly went charging in before being stopped, accidentally causing Sena, Tori and Finn to drift too close to the convergence and they were affected by the card's power, stripping them of their memory. And soon after finding an amnesiac Jahara, Rai only got annoyed by the fact the four could not remember anything about Tai Chi. But after seeing that his friends were easier to trick than before, Rai used their amnesia as an excuse to trick them into doing a lot of his chores while he lazed about. When Ave came to attack the airship, Rai tried to attack him aboard one of the airboards, but was knocked down towards the city below. He found himself at danger of falling under the Forget card's power, but his strong desire to remember broke the convergence and he obtained the card before returning to help his friends. However, after driving Ave off, those Rai tricked automatically came after him in spite for putting them through so much grief while their memories were lost. Rai's Secret Powers While in his next battle with Luka, Rai and Luka are swept into another dimension by the effect of a Tai Chi card converging on Luka and the two must work together to escape, something Rai does not approve of at first until convinced otherwise. They soon find their own Tai Chi cards have been taken from them and are fused within the reality of the world, reacting only when there is dispute between them (evidence by Rai's own cards attacking him when he was mad at Luka). To make matters worse, Ave has returned and is sent to attack Rai and Luka. Luka manages to take Ave on long enough for Rai to face the convergance and actually subdue it with his own power, something that shocks General Mischa as he watches from the Dragonoid lair. With the convergance over, Rai gained the card and was sent back to his friends while Luka was transported somewhere else. In another epis ode, Rai goes to the Tigeroid base with the other chasers, however it is attacked by the Dragonoid elites and the chasers try to fight them off. As the other chasers fight the other members, Rai tangles with the squads leader and is overpowered. When Sena and Tori are on conscious, Rai takes the whole squad on his own. He easily wins by beating them up with the army card and flying upward with his wings card then makes a big cut in the ground with the slice card causing them to fall through. Rai is hailed a hero back at the base, however Komorka tells him never to use the army and wings cards again. When Rai asks why, however, she stays quiet. In another episode, Luka and an enraged Jahara attack Rai and the chasers, and Rai is shown falling from a deadly height towards an icy chasm. However he used the wing character to rescue himself despite komorka's words before. He then defeats Luka, Garnia, and Jahara(who has been controled by the monstrous tai chi card like Ave) by using his new hot tai chi card he had gotten in the beggining of the episode to melt the snow and create a giant avalanche. Rai sticks around to make sure Jahara was okay, telling Luka that he saved him once. Rai then said that he owed Luka one. Despite having the opportunity to finish them off, even Luka, Rai turns around and walks away, hoping he did the right thing. Rai later joins his fellow Chasers and Tigeroids in launching a full scale attack on the Luftdrake, the lair of the Dragonoids, now that they recovered a great majority of their lost Tai Chi cards. He was apart of the team that was charged with breaking through the lightning barrier around the base. With it gone, the Tigeroids began their attack on the Luftdrake. But Mischka has been heard discussing with Luka earlier that Rai is somehow using a Dragonoid Tai Chi card, the Wing card, when he is a Tigeroid. This should not be possible according to the general. When Rai and the others come to the Luftdrake, they are on a new mission as the mysterious masked warrior wanrs them that Mischka has rigged the Luftdrake to explode and they must free the other Tigeroids. But standing in their way is a stubborn headed Garnia, who is looking forward to their "final battle". But Luka appears and tells Garnia the Chasers speak the truth before the appearance of Jahara. Eventually, Garnia saves Luka and the Chasers by taking on the Monstrous Tai Chi infecting Jahara into himself. The Chasers later manage to free the others when Rai emits a powerful aura that neutralizes the Tai Chi locks placed on the doors before the Luftdrake explodes. The warrior watches as they leave, claming Rai to be "the one". But it appears that after escaping with his friends, the Tigeroid's Base is attacked and it is up to Rai and the Chasers to save the day. However, this is the first mission Rai and the team fail as two of the Dragonoid Assault Squad members successfully escaped with the Tai Chi Characters. Filled with anger that he was not about to fail, Rai used the Wing Tai Chi, despite warnings from Komorka not to use it, and chased after them. They were intercepted by Mischka, the first meeting between Rai and the new general, who used the Move Tai Chi to escape with the symbols. Rai tried to attack, but Mischka mocked Rai with his "greater knowledge" of the characters, causing him to strike blindly into a barrier. When Rai returns defeated, he is praised for giving it his best by Sena before being placed under arrest by Tigeroid soldiers, claiming him to be a spy for the Draganoids since he used a Dragonoid Tai Chi. He screams at everyone to back them up, but all remain silent. Rai is now sentenced to be turned to stone. Category:Main Characters Category:Tigeroid Category:Tai-Chi Wielders Category:Dragonoids Category:Member of the Tai Chi Chasers Category:Protagonist